Wolf Mask
by Kilerkki
Summary: Hatake Kakashi arrives on the battleground too late for three of the four Konoha ANBU. When battles are over, can life still go on? COMPLETE.
1. Too Late

_Disclaimer:_ I would love to take credit for _Naruto, _because I think it's absolutely brilliant, but sadly I own nothing except _Shuurai no Jutsu _and the current incarnation of Inuzuka Kiyame. And this story, of course.

_Author's Notes:_

The catalyst for this fic was the distressing (to me) lack of good Kakashi pairings. Since I firmly hold to the belief that Kakashi is het, and since I firmly dislike most OC pairings, I had to do some digging to find a real canon character I thought Kakashi could get along with. Thus enters Inuzuka Kiyame, Kiba's older sister, who appears briefly in the manga in Chapters 137 and 235.

Warning: spoilers up to Manga Ch. 244 (through the end of Kakashi Gaiden). Also violence, angst, and shinobi who don't always follow Rule #25…

* * *

Wolf Mask

Chapter One: Too Late

When Hatake Kakashi arrived on the scene, most of the ANBU squad was already dead.

He was no Inuzuka, but he still smelled the battle before he saw the break in the trees and the smoke lazily spiraling up to the clouds. Someone had used a good many explosion tags, and several someones had spilled a great deal of blood. More than blood, by the stench. Kakashi rubbed the hilt of the kunai in his hand and tried to prepare himself for a sight that should, after fifteen years as a Leaf Village jounin, have been as familiar to him as the well-thumbed pages of his favorite book.

Somehow it never was. Enemy deaths didn't faze him—he had too much blood on his hands, after years of war and service in the ANBU, to worry about something like _that—_but when he saw the smashed masks and broken bodies of those he'd once called _comrades, _if not _friends, _the old ache came back and tore at his chest. Hatake Kakashi didn't cry, not anymore, but his left eye—Obito's eye—began to water. The sturdy cloth of the forehead protector he wore slanted over the Sharingan eye absorbed the useless tears, and his face remained as dry and cold as a shinobi's should be.

The battle had torn an unnaturally large clearing among the towering forest trees, and the edges were still smoldering angrily. Kakashi held his breath and sprang through the barrier of smoke, landing in a solid three-point crouch in the center of the clearing. The smoke drifted sideways, thick and greasy and heavy with the reek of seared meat. His mask filtered out most of the ash, but it could not hide the stench. Death was not pretty—especially not so gruesome a death as these shinobi had died.

Three of the mangled corpses were Leaf Village ANBU. At least, he thought there were three, although some of the pieces were too shredded and scattered to sort out who they had belonged to. Two more, he was almost certain, belonged to the missing-nin the ANBU had been sent to destroy. But hadn't there been _five _missing-nin, three from the Hidden Village of Cloud who'd teamed up with two from Leaf and thus rendered themselves Konoha's problem? And where was the fourth ANBU?

He scouted around the clearing, finding a few unsprung traps (he disarmed them easily), the second ANBU member's missing head (he closed his eye and said a silent prayer before moving on), and the fourth ANBU mask. It was cracked down the center and spotted with congealing blood, but he could tell that originally it had taken the shape of a snarling wolf's head. Rather like his own old ANBU mask, come to think of it… There hadn't been another wolf in the ANBU when he'd left, so this one must be fairly new.

_Fairly new… _Kakashi snorted. _It's been eight years, and I haven't been keeping tabs on ANBU since then. The kid could be anybody! _

And the kid could be anywhere, which was more to the point. He—or she; the mask was a little too small for a man's face, although it might easily fit an adolescent—wasn't in the clearing, but that didn't mean much. Maybe the wounded shinobi had staggered off to die. Maybe he'd followed the absent missing-nins in a desperate attempt to finish the mission for which his teammates had died. Maybe he was facing those renegade ninjas right now!

Kakashi didn't hesitate any longer. He slashed the ball of his left thumb shallowly with the kunai in his right hand and flashed through the seals. "_Kyuichose no Jutsu!"_

The blood-soaked soil under his hand grew soft and warm with fur. Kakashi pulled his hand away, smiling grimly down at the small nin-dog crouched on the ground. "Oi, Pakkun. Got a mission for you."

Pakkun scratched himself behind the ear with a hind foot as he looked around, slowly taking in the carnage. When the dog finally spoke, his deep bass voice sounded unusually strained. "They don't play around, do they? Took out three ANBU and only lost two…"

"One of the ANBU got away," Kakashi said flatly. "And three of the enemy are missing too." He held out the cracked pieces of the bloody wolf's-head-mask. "Can you pick up this scent?"

Pakkun gave him a dirty look, but the dog could sense Kakashi's urgency. He sniffed the bloody mask, cast around on the ravaged forest floor for a moment, and then set off through the smoke at a hurtling gallop.

Kakashi sprinted after the dog, whispering a fervent prayer that he wouldn't be too late.

* * *

He almost was. 

His ears had just caught the faint murmur of running water when Pakkun stopped abruptly, his black-button nose in the air and his stubby tail clamped to his hindquarters. Kakashi slid another kunai out of his belt pouch, just to be on the safe side, and dropped into a crouch beside the nin-dog. "What's there?" he demanded in a low whisper.

"Your ANBU girl," Pakkun growled back. "Three dogs. Blood."

"Any of the Cloud nin?"

Pakkun shook his head and sneezed. "Can't smell any. But…there's a _lot _of blood."

"Yeah." Kakashi rose again, jaw clenched. The Cloud nin hadn't already attacked the injured ANBU—a girl, was she?—or Pakkun would have smelled them, but they could be closing in. He'd have to move fast.

He was about to dismiss Pakkun when another thought struck. "_Three _dogs? Could they be using a transformation technique?"

Pakkun snarled softly. "_Henge no Jutsu _doesn't change smells. Those are Inuzuka dogs."

Inuzuka? Well, that would explain the wolf mask. And it would also mean that Kakashi and the ANBU wouldn't be fighting alone. He'd watched the match between his former student Naruto and Inuzuka Kiba in the preliminary finals of the Chuunin exams last year, and he'd seen the extraordinary partnership of an Inuzuka and his dog. They fought almost as one entity in two bodies. With three nin-dogs to protect her, no wonder this Inuzuka ANBU had survived!

"Thanks, Pakkun," he murmured. "You'd better clear out now. Follow my trail back to Konoha and tell Tsunade-sama where I am and what's happened. Go!"

Kakashi didn't wait to watch Pakkun follow his orders. Clenching the kunais in his fists, he slipped forward to see what remained of the Konoha ANBU squad.

He saw the dog first. It was a shaggy, wolf-like grey and white male, with a scarred nose and a scorched shoulder. Snarling and bristling, the dog paced a narrow circle on the edge of the stream bank upwind of Kakashi, his brown eyes raking the forest for any sign of enemies. Behind him, another dog licked her bleeding leg and cast worried glances at the third dog, which lay still on the pebbled bank. The rocks were red with his blood, and the ANBU girl kneeling over him was swearing fiercely enough to make Mitarashi Anko blush.

From the crimson triangles tattooed fang-like on her cheeks and the skilled tenderness with which her hands moved over the dog's body, the girl was definitely an Inuzuka. She wore the standard ANBU uniform, but the black bodysuit was now shredded and scorched. Blood stained the entire chest of her silvery-grey vest. She'd discarded the armored black gloves, and her hands were red to the elbow. One of those hands held together the raw lips of a gaping wound in the dog's belly, while the other drew a threaded needle from the aid-kit at her belt. "Hold on, Katsu," she murmured in a low, desperate voice. "Just a little longer, brave one, you can make it…"

The dog whined as the needle bit into his torn flesh. The Inuzuka girl swore again—then her nose twitched, her head jerked up, and her dark eyes widened. The first and second dogs drew close together, hackles bristling and lips curling back to bare gleaming white teeth. They faced upwind, away from Kakashi's concealed perch high in the branches of a nearby tree. Kakashi held his breath. _The missing-nin?_

A low chuckle cut through the dogs' savage growls. "Very nice," the Cloud shinobi mocked, stepping out of the trees. His grey vest and trousers were scorched and bloody, but he moved with an easy, unwounded grace. "Now, if your pets had been this observant when we first met, maybe the rest of your team would still be alive, eh?" Smiling coldly, he adjusted the Hidden Village of Cloud forehead protector he still wore, although the engraved lightning symbol was marred by a single deep crack, the mark of a missing-nin.

Kakashi's visible eye narrowed as he scanned the woods around him. If this missing-nin was here, where were the other two? Maneuvering into more favorable positions around the Inuzuka girl and her dogs, no doubt…

"You—" the young woman choked, rising from her knees and reaching back for the katana sheathed over her shoulder. "How _dare _you—"

Kakashi saw the flash of movement on the other side of the stream bank just as the kunoichi unsheathed her katana. He didn't pause to think, to weigh his options or to consider his position. He simply launched himself from the tree branch, interposing his body between the ANBU girl and the second Cloud nin. The man dodged Kakashi's sweeping kick, but the blade of his kunai caught the whirling edge of the missing-nin's fuuma shuriken, and the two of them landed with a splash in the shallow waters of the stream.

_Second time's the charm, _Kakashi thought grimly—_didn't this already happen with Zabuza?_

The Cloud shinobi sneered. "Another Konoha dog decides to come out of hiding, eh? You'll be sorry…" He forced the shuriken down another two centimeters, and the tip of one blade kissed Kakashi's shoulder. The missing-nin was taller and heavier than Kakashi, and if he pressed just a little harder—

"You're the one," Kakashi breathed, "who's going to be sorry." His left hand came up, guiding the second kunai towards the missing-nin's heart—

"_Shuurai no Jutsu!_" a third voice roared, and Kakashi's world exploded in white fire.

* * *

_Author's Notes_

Thanks to my terrific beta reader, PhoenixOfEternity, who addicted me to _Naruto _in the first place.

Inuzuka Onee-chan is also on the Chapter Cover for Chapter 198, if you want to take a look. I confess, I did make up her personal name and her status as an ANBU member, but I've done my research, and you shouldn't find any discrepancies with the (shreds of) facts Masashi Kishimoto gives us about her. And given that this fic is set sometime in the 2 years after Naruto leaves Konoha, why shouldn't she have joined ANBU in the interim?


	2. Feral

Disclaimer: I would love to take all the credit for _Naruto, _because I think that the world and the concepts are absolutely brilliant, but sadly, nothing except _Shuurai no Jutsu, Kyouken no Jutsu, _and Inuzuka Kiyame's current incarnation belong to me.

Author's Note: Poor Kakashi. This just isn't his day.

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Chapter Two: Feral

The chakra lightning bolt took him squarely in the chest, a little below the collarbone. Kakashi _saw _it hit, saw the white streak flash from the hands of the shadowed figure across the stream bank, saw it sink sizzling into his vest and burn its way through. He saw, as his head whiplashed back with the force of his scream and his nerves seared with agony, his own left hand outlined in white fire. Both kunai dropped from his nerveless fingers. Pain bit into his shoulder as the second Cloud shinobi's fuuma shuriken sank down through his vest and into his flesh, but that pain was nothing, a candle flame next to the _Katon Goukakyuu _that raged through his veins.

His knees buckled, and his hands refused to catch his fall. His muscles weren't _his _anymore; pain ruled his body now. His shoulder smashed against a sharp rock on the bank, and then his head hit the same rock, and his body wasn't just not paying attention to him, it was moving on its own…

He convulsed, choking on blood, and rocks ripped at his flesh and he could feel his mask tearing and _why was he worrying about his stupid mask when he was dying?_

_I never meant to go like this, _he thought as his body flailed, every heartbeat pumping agony through his veins. _I meant to go out fighting, saving Konoha, like Sensei. I meant to die saving my friends, like Obito. I wanted to make my death _mean _something—to atone for my father's…_

_I am not going to let them take that from me!_

He bit down on his lip so hard that blood filled his mouth again, but this time it was his own action, his muscles following the orders of his own thoughts, his own pain—his own control. Slowly the spasms calmed, and he lay still but for the occasional agonizing judder that seized his muscles. He lay on his left side, one arm trapped under him, with the stream tugging at his legs and his hip knocking gently against the rocky streambed. He was wet and cold and hurting all over, and he felt as weak as when he'd collapsed, drained of chakra, after the first battle with Zabuza…but he was alive.

Was the Inuzuka?

He tried to lift his head, but he barely managed to pull his cheek away from the rocky ground. The shreds of his forehead protector fell from his head, and the metal plate hit the rocks and bounced away with a clang. He must have torn the headband as well as the mask during his seizure. His field of vision was much wider than he was used to, but he could still only see rocks smeared with his blood, a foreshortened view of his lower body half-submerged in the stream, and—a leg?

A woman's leg, planted firmly on the ground a hand's-breadth away from his shoulder, muscled calf wrapped in black cloth bindings and tanned foot clad in a black sandal. Blood seeped down from underneath the leg bindings to dye the woman's bare heel crimson. She was straddling him, he realized, standing over him to protect the man who'd meant to come to _her _rescue…

"Can you move, Hakate-san?" she asked in a low voice.

"N-not just yet." Kakashi forced the words out through leaden lips. No need to ask how she knew his name; his silver-white hair, masked face, and covered eye were familiar to every ninja in Konoha. "Need…breathing space. Gods!" The last time he could remember experiencing this level of pain had seen him trapped in Uchiha Itachi's Tsukuyomi Sharingan technique for three days of illusionary torture. That technique had left him in a coma for a month. This one would probably do even worse damage.

"He won't be moving at all," one of the Cloud missing-nin said mockingly. Kakashi mentally pinpointed the voice as perhaps five meters away, on the near side of the stream. It sounded like the shinobi who'd used the fuuma shuriken.

_He must've moved when I went down—but why didn't he finish me off?_

The Cloud ninja answered his unspoken question a moment later. "That Lightning Strike technique should have killed him immediately. Even so, his nervous system is fried. Don't worry about _him, _girlie. He won't go anywhere. We'll take care of him after we're finished with _you._"

Inuzuka replied with a string of words that would've sent half the jounin in Konoha running for cover. "Don't think you can scare _me,_" she finished with a snarl. "And don't you _dare _try any seals, you motherless cowards, 'cause I'll rip your fingers off and shove 'em down your throats. I'm Inuzuka Kiyame of Konoha, and you _don't _mess with me and my team and come out of it alive." Her dogs growled approval.

Silence, for the space of half a dozen heartbeats. Kakashi hitched his left arm under him and tried applying a little leverage—he wasn't doing _any _good lying here—but didn't manage to make it more than a couple centimeters off the ground. He paused, panting. At least now he could see the Cloud shinobi, who didn't seem to have noticed him yet. The three men stood together at the edge of the woods, looking almost as beaten up as Inuzuka Kiyame, if not quite as bloody. The tallest one still held his fuuma shuriken, while the slender man who'd first stepped out of the woods now wielded a katana. The third stood bare-handed, his dark hair masking his face. Tiny lightnings still played over his fingers. Kakashi swallowed. _He's the one who used that jutsu on me. Can he do it again, or does it have a usage limit, like the Chidori? Well, if he does try it, at least this time I'll have a chance to copy it…_

_If _he could force his hands to work. _If _he could mold enough chakra to perform such a powerful jutsu. At the moment, both seemed impossible.

Two of Kiyame's dogs were still on their feet, pacing about a meter in front of the Konoha ninjas and growling louder than Naruto's stomach after a full day of training. The third, the critically injured male Katsu, lay in an ungainly heap of bloody grey fur two meters to Kakashi's right. The dog's sides still heaved as he fought for air. Somehow, the sight relieved Kakashi. He'd never worked with an Inuzuka, but the clan's partnerships with their dogs was legendary, and having a dog die on her now—after already suffering the deaths of her three teammates—would probably drive this girl over the brink.

The missing-nin had reached the same conclusion. "Well, then," the one with the katana said pleasantly. "We'll just solve this the messy way, eh?"

It happened almost too fast for even Kakashi to follow. The missing-nin took a step forward, raising his katana. Kiyame cried out—a warning, a curse, a prayer, Kakashi would never know. The two dogs snarled and sprang, attacking from each side but moving so perfectly in tandem that they were like a single furious beast. The missing-nin pivoted smoothly, the blade of his katana flashing first steely grey, then dripping red…

_Oh, little gods and demons…_

Kiyame's scream of rage and grief ripped at Kakashi's heart. It was too much like the soundless cry that had echoed inside him at every moment for months after Obito's death, the cry that returned to ring in his ears every time he saw a new name carved on the memorial or glanced at the picture of the three students he'd trained and loved and protected…and ultimately failed. He hadn't realized how much he'd loved them until he'd lost them, which was always how it happened; it'd been the same with Obito and then Rin, two years later.

But then, Kiyame _knew _what she'd lost. Two of three dogs, closer than teammates, a second and third soul—and the fourth was lying there on the rocks, gasping out his life, and the missing-nin was heading towards it with a smile…

"Akira," Kiyame whispered. "Amaya. You won't go alone." The katana dropped from her fingers and clattered on the rocks by Kakashi's nose. He caught his breath, pushed himself up another few centimeters, and reached for her leg—_No, don't throw yourself away!_—but she evaded his grasp effortlessly. Her hands were already moving as she stepped between the Cloud shinobi and her last dog. The seals she formed were powerful, violent, in a simple combination Kakashi had never seen: Dragon, Boar, Dog. She held the Dog seal as she closed her eyes.

"_Kyouken no Jutsu!_"

_Mad Dog Technique? _Kakashi wondered, in the split second before Kiyame opened her eyes.

They were bright gold, and there was _nothing _of sanity in them anymore.

The Cloud nin wasn't watching her eyes, and for a moment he didn't notice the change. But no one could ignore the claws that sprouted from her fingers and toes, or the fangs that suddenly distended her lips, or the shift in her stance that left her crouched on the ground, clawed hands gripping the rocks and fangs bared in an unholy smile.

Kakashi's Sharingan saw the jutsu, of course. He watched the chakra flow within the girl's body and knew that without even wanting to, he could copy those changes—he was, after all, still the legendary Copy Ninja Sharingan Kakashi, even if at this point he felt like nothing so much as a piece of raw meat. But beyond the physical changes, the Sharingan saw something he knew not even an Uchiha could copy. It reminded him of a Celestial Gate, only this was a Gate that held back not chakra, but…something else. Something that glittered in the woman's eyes as it erased all traces of human sanity and replaced them with pure lust for blood. Something that saw the three Cloud nins as prey.

The Cloud shinobi faltered just for a moment, his eyes widening as he took in the effects of Kiyame's ninjutsu. That moment was his last. The ANBU sprang, twisted in midair to avoid his slashing katana, and sank her fangs into his throat. The force of her attack half-ripped the missing-nin's head off. Blood fountained out, pattering down on the rocks in a rich red rain.

Kiyame wrenched her claws out of the body and tossed it aside. Her mad golden eyes seemed almost to glow out of her blood-masked face as they flickered to the remaining two missing-nin. A growl rumbled deep in her chest. The dark-haired Cloud raised his hands again, fingers meeting for the first seal—

_If he finishes that jutsu, she's dead, _Kakashi thought. _There's only one thing I can do…_

His fingers still wouldn't work quite right, and his right arm barely worked at all, but he forced them on ruthlessly, racing through the seals as his eyes locked on the two missing-nin. _Bird, Ox, Serpent, don't break eye contact, _concentrate, _dredge up that last little bit of chakra you know is there—_

He'd lost his old speed, didn't know if he'd ever get it back, but the technique he'd chosen took two seals less than the Cloud's jutsu. This time, Kakashi wasn't too late. He finished a breath ahead of the other man, gathered all his remaining chakra, and shouted, "_Kanashibari no Jutsu!_"

"_Shuurai no Jutsu!_" the Cloud nin bellowed a second later.

The lightning bolt gathered in the missing-nin's hands—and stayed there. Kakashi's Body Binding technique had locked the Cloud shinobi's muscles, and the lightning sputtered uselessly around the man's hands. His eyes widened in horror.

Kiyame howled in triumph.

Out of the corner of his right eye, Kakashi saw the lupine woman attack. He had time enough to close his eyes against the savage horror, time enough to wrench his gaze from the terrified faces of the two men who saw their death bounding toward them with dripping fangs. But he thought of the mangled ANBU he'd found in the clearing, and the defenseless farmers the missing-nins had robbed and butchered, and the two dogs whose heads no longer joined their shoulders. Breaking eye contact would break the binding jutsu, and not even Gai's student Lee could outrun that lightning.

And besides, Kakashi was a jounin of Konoha, elite among the elite. He had killed his first man at the age of six, shortly after he became chuunin. He had joined the ANBU at fourteen, two days after his sensei died saving Konoha from the Kyuubi. He had served in ANBU for six years, performing more missions and killing more enemies than he could count. He'd grown used to the feeling of a heart's last desperate pump as his Chidori-powered hand punched through his target's chest. Was _that _any less savage than _this?_

So he held the Body Binding jutsu, and he did not look away as Kiyame tore the remaining two missing-nin into shreds so small no one would ever recognize them. He watched with his own eye and with Obito's, and he managed not to be sick.

It was not any worse than the deaths her ANBU teammates had met, after all.

At last Kiyame's blood-lust seemed to slake. She turned in a slow, bewildered circle among the scattered remnants of her victims, still crouched on all fours and now almost totally dyed in blood. Kakashi watched with narrowed eyes, waiting for her to release the jutsu. That wound on her leg had been bleeding badly and was probably worse now after her intensely physical attack. One of her arms was injured as well, and—

_Ouch. _He bit his lip and stopped his clumsy attempt to sit up as his wounded shoulder screamed pain at him. In the wake of the lightning strike, he'd almost forgotten the giant shuriken that had sliced into his shoulder; he'd noticed that his right arm worked even less than his left, but he'd been too busy to think about it. Now, with the pain of the electrocution beginning to fade away, his other injuries pushed themselves to his attention. His face… He lifted his fingers to the gashed cheek, now left bare by a mask torn beyond hope of recovery. Well, the bandages he'd be wearing for the next week or so would serve the purpose well enough.

His aid kit was on the back of his belt, in the hip pouch that also held spare kunai, explosion notes, ration bars, and—when not on missions—a dog-eared copy of _Icha Icha Paradise. _Most of his lower body still lay in the chill waters of the stream, but fortunately the pouch was water-proof. His explosion notes might be damp, but the bandages in the sealed aid kit should still be dry. And, praise the gods, his legs were beginning to work again! He wormed his way further up the bank, pulled the kit out of the pouch, and set his teeth against the sharp knife of pain as he pushed himself up into a sitting position.

He had to cover the Sharingan first, before it drained any more of his tiny reservoir of remaining chakra. He was a little surprised he hadn't passed out already—_Guess I must be stronger than I thought. Huh. You were right as usual, Yondaime-sensei. We only have limits so we can surpass 'em._

The headband that had once held his forehead protector over his eye was now beyond repair. He stuffed it into his pouch and wrapped a few lengths of white bandage clumsily around his head instead, wincing when his fingers brushed raw flesh. The shoulder wound had rendered his right arm almost useless—he couldn't raise it above waist level—but he wasn't a jounin for nothing, and he managed to tie the bandage one-handed after only a few minutes of fumbling. With Obito's eye covered at last, the Sharingan's relentless drain of chakra dammed, he turned his attention to the next objective.

"Ah—Inuzuka-san!"

She had crouched at the edge of the woods, facing away from him, her shoulders bowed and her head bent. Somehow her hair had escaped from its strict ponytail, and now the long dark locks fell around her face, tangled and matted with blood. Her head lifted slightly at his call, baring the reddened curve of her cheek. He could only faintly make out the crimson fang tattooed on her cheek beneath the new mask of blood. _Have to make sure to wash her face before we get back to Konoha—but who'm I kidding? She could've bathed in blood—it looks like she did—and it still wouldn't be the worse thing the medic-nins've seen…_

Still, he kept his voice low, soothing. Who knew what she was thinking now, as she stared at the hands that had so recently torn three men's lives from their bodies? "Inuzuka-san, I'd better take a look at that leg. It could—"

The words strangled in his throat. She had turned to face him, and now he saw that bloody claws still gleamed at her finger-tips, that vicious fangs still distorted her full mouth, that golden eyes still glowed with madness beneath her thin dark brows.

_Dear gods, she hasn't released the jutsu…and I've just brought myself to her attention… _

He reached left-handed for a kunai, but even as his hand closed around the cold metal hilt, he knew he wouldn't be able to do anything but buy himself a slightly more dignified death. It wasn't just that the bestial jutsu had lent her an almost blinding speed, or that his body was still too weak and slow to defend himself from any sort of attack above the genin level, or even that he'd exhausted almost all his chakra. All of those were true, but it was the voices echoing distantly in the back of his skull that convinced him he couldn't kill her. Obito's voice. _Those who don't care about their companions are even worse trash… _And his own. _I don't let my comrades die… _

Never mind that she wasn't truly a teammate of his, never mind that he'd never seen or spoken to her before today. She was a ninja of Konoha, and he _couldn't _kill a comrade just to save his own scarred and sorry hide.

He smiled a little, grimly, sadly. He'd spent the last fifteen years of his life regretting every day that he'd lived and Obito hadn't. Obito and Rin and Yondaime-sensei, his father twenty years ago and the Sandaime not yet a year ago. He'd see them all soon enough, and at last he'd be able to tell Obito how truly, deeply, desperately sorry he was that even with Obito's gift, he'd not managed to make much of his life. He'd had chances, and he'd thrown almost all of them away; students, and he'd failed them; friends, and he'd lost them one by one.

_At least the missing-nin are dead. I saved one life and helped take two. Does it balance?_

_I hope, Inuzuka Kiyame, that if you ever recover your mind, you'll never remember this moment…_

He drew his legs up and rested his forearm on his bent knees, with the kunai dangling loosely from his fingers. He couldn't hope to hold her off for long, but at least he'd be able to buy himself a bit of pride, a shred of dignity. A jounin of Konoha never went down without a fight.

She paced slowly towards him, her lips skinning back to bare her teeth. Her low growl raised the short hairs on the back of his neck. Staring into those rabid golden eyes, he wondered if there was _anything _of the proud kunoichi left in that body. "Inuzuka-san? Kiyame? Can you understand me?"

The eyes didn't flicker. She was only three meters away now; in a moment her teeth would meet in his throat. He twirled the kunai around his finger and slapped the hilt into the palm of his hand. _Aim to injure, not to kill…_

In the corner of Kakashi's eye, a bloody heap of grey and white fur stirred, scrabbled at the rocky ground, and heaved itself to its feet. A deep, harsh bark split through Kiyame's snarl. The feral woman froze, and for the first time her savage mask cracked. Her eyes darted in confusion from Kakashi to the dog. Kakashi held his breath, watching the wounded dog take one unsteady step forward, then another. The white fur of his belly was matted with blood and dirt, and he whined with pain at every step, but he kept going. Four steps, five…and then he was between the two Konoha ninjas, his sides heaving with effort and pain, his ears laced back against his head and his hackles bristling. He stood facing his Inuzuka partner, shielding Kakashi with his body. His snarl was ragged with pain, but the message was clear: _You'll have to go through me to get to him. _Can _you?_

Kiyame made a low, unhappy noise in the back of her throat. She stretched out one clawed, blood-dyed hand, then dropped it again. The dog barked again, sharply, and Kiyame shuddered at the sound. Her eyes closed briefly, then reopened in time for Kakashi to see the last streaks of mad gold fading from their horrified brown depths. Somehow, the dog had broken the jutsu…and returned Inuzuka Kiyame to a scene of unimaginable carnage.

"Hatake-san—" the young woman whispered, her voice hoarse with shock. "Did I—oh gods, I almost attacked _you—_Katsu, if you hadn't—" She held out her bloody hand to the dog, who took an eager step toward her, stumbled, and crumpled to the ground. Kiyame swore and fumbled desperately for the aid-kit at her belt. She seemed to have completely forgotten Kakashi; well, he couldn't blame her. If that dog died _now…_

She could quite possibly go mad again. And this time, there would be no one to bring her out of it.

His fingers curled around the cold hilt of the kunai. _She _seems _all right…but all the same, I don't think I'll put this away just yet. _

_Well, just sitting here won't do much good…_

His muscles were obeying his commands reasonably well, which called for further experimentation. He planted his left palm on the ground and tried to lever himself up. To his dismay, his elbow buckled, pitching him onto his side and jarring his wounded shoulder. _Damn, that hurt! Too weak to even stand up…some shinobi! What've you done today but thoroughly botch this 'rescue?' If you had _thought _instead of just jumping straight in, you'd have sensed the guy across the stream and blocked his lightning bolt, and none of this would have happened._

_Lightning bolt…_

His fingers dropped from his shoulder to his chest. Too concerned with the effects of the jutsu on his muscles and nervous system, he hadn't even thought about what the chakra lightning might have done at its entry point. It hadn't hurt any more than the rest of him had—which probably just meant that the nerve endings had been burnt so badly that he'd lost all feeling. Nothing Tsunade-sama couldn't fix…but the fixing was going to _hurt. _

Jounin flak vests were supposed to be water-proof, flame-resistant, and even moderately stylish. _I think I'm withdrawing my endorsement, _Kakashi thought sourly as he fingered the charred hole in the center of his vest. The zipper had melted into an amorphous blob of silvery metal, and the stiff olive-green canvas had peeled away from an ugly blistering burn that rayed out from a central point on his breastbone like a squished spider. His shirt had disintegrated altogether. Worst of all, with the zipper melted he'd have to _cut _the blasted vest off in order to tend either his burned chest or his gashed shoulder. The shoulder wound wasn't more than a couple of centimeters deep, but aside from rendering his right arm practically useless, it was also bleeding steadily, sapping even more of his dangerous low chakra.

_At this rate, I'm going to have to ask Inuzuka for help. _Kakashi grimaced. The blood-drenched kunoichi was still kneeling over her dog, alternately swearing and cajoling in a voice now fierce, now pleading. The slightest of trembles had crept into her voice, but her hands were still admirably steady as she stiched the gaping wound in Katsu's belly. _Now is not a good time, _Kakashi decided. _Ah well. I can hang on. I've survived far worse injuries than this, after all… _He just couldn't think of any, which was funny, because he knew the scars were there, if he looked down he could see them snaking over his chest and belly, pale skin that never saw the sunlight because who would want to show off a hide that rivaled Morino Ibiki's head for sheer number and intensity of scars? _Kakashi…you're delirious. _He groaned. Well, at least his body and mind had chosen a time of relative safety to start shutting down… He seemed to have a knack for it; the same thing had happened with Zabuza. _If I'm lucky, I've got five minutes before I pass out… _

Probably less than that. His vision was getting hazy already. Was that really Maito Gai dropping out of the trees onto one of the only clear spots of grass, followed by a tiny dun-colored nin-dog, Sarutobi Asuma, and Yuuhi Kurenai? He had to be hallucinating. Gai wasn't even in Konoha; he and his team had left three weeks ago for a mission in Water Country. But…why would Kakashi hallucinate his self-proclaimed eternal rival? Surely there were much more pleasant—and _far _more unpleasant—images to haunt his fever-dreams.

The hallucinations were talking. Voices drifted in and out of his hearing.

Kurenai, hoarse with shock: "Kiyame! Dear gods, what—"

Asuma, a low murmur: "Whatever did this…that is one _seriously _pissed ninja…"

And Gai, no longer loud and abrasive, but speaking in the quiet, preternaturally calm tone Kakashi had only heard a few times in his life, when he'd been young and stupid and hovering on the edge of death: "Hold on, Kakashi. Hold on. We're here. Pakkun appeared in Tsunade-sama's office just as I was delivering my report…there's a medic-team behind us, you're gonna be okay." A large hand closed over Kakashi's limp fingers, and a green silk handkerchief drifted over his ravaged face. "There you go. Feel any better?"

No hallucination would be so concerned. No hallucination would remember to cover his face. No hallucination would _care. _

Kakashi squeezed Gai's hand weakly. "Hey…I thought…_I'm _the one who's…always late."

Gai laughed quietly. "Yeah, well, the rest of us have gotta have some glory sometime… Hang on, Kakashi. You're gonna make it."

A grin now, even weaker than the hand-squeeze, and Gai's face was out of focus and fading into a fuzzy blend of black and brown and startling white… "I'm…Hatake Kakashi. I always do."

* * *

Author's Note

Techniques:

_Kyuichose no Jutsu:_ Summoning technique (canon)

_Henge no Jutsu: _Transformation technique (canon)

_Shuurai no Jutsu: _Lightning Strike technique (original)

_Katon Goukakyuu: _Fire Element, Grand Fireball (canon)

_Kyouken no Jutsu: _Mad Dog technique (original)

_Kanashibari no Jutsu: _Body Binding technique (canon; used by Orochimaru against Sasuke and Sakura in the second test of the Chuunin exams; original adaptation for Kakashi's version, since I don't know the exact seals he and the other Konoha ANBU would use.)

Many thanks and much praise to my splendiferous (I told you I'd find a way to work that word in!) beta, Phoenix Of Eternity, who has constantly encouraged and inspired me in the writing of this fic. Her comments and criticism have been invaluable.

Many thanks also to anyone who reads and reviews. I like to know how my work is accepted, and I love constructive criticism. Please tell me what you think!


	3. Questions

Disclaimer:I love _Naruto. _Unfortunately, I don't own any of it. Yep, that's right. Not a chapter of manga, not an episode of anime. However, I do lay claim to Inuzuka Kiyame's current incarnation and to _Shuurai no Jutsu _and _Kyouken no Jutsu. _

Author's Note: Thanks to all the wonderful reviewers! Check Author's Notes at the bottom for my responses, since I'm sure you don't want anything to keep you from diving into the story _right now…

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_

Chapter Three: Questions

Sunshine shone warm and comforting against his eyelids, chasing away the darkness that had held him for so long. He moaned in pleasure and turned his face blindly towards the light. _Sunlight _meant _morning, _and _morning _meant he'd survived the surgery and the night…

"Good morning, Kakashi-sensei!" a familiar voice said brightly. "Tsunade-sama said you'd be waking up soon. How do you feel?"

_Like Jiraiya tied shuriken to his sandals and went tap-dancing on my chest. Still… _"Better than I expected," he said honestly. "Alive. So you're on hospital duty now, Sakura?"

"Just basic stuff," his former student said. Kakashi turned his head and opened his eyes in time to see Haruno Sakura settle onto a stool beside his bed, brushing her short pink hair out of her eyes. "Patient care, mixing medicines, cleaning bed pans…ugh. Tsunade-sama let me help when she stitched up Inuzuka-san's leg, though!"

She sounded more enthusiastic than she'd ever sounded about anything when she was in Team 7…except for Sasuke, of course. Kakashi quickly steered his thoughts away from the Uchiha boy. _That _wound was still too raw to touch. He studied Sakura instead, noting with a pang how she'd changed in the months since he'd seen her. The most visible difference was in her clothing; instead of the red dress and teal shorts she'd worn during her time in Team 7, she now wore a sleeveless red vest, black shorts, and a short dark green skirt. There was a new confidence in her bearing, a little more wisdom in her face, a little more sorrow in her sea-green eyes. She had grown a great deal in the eight months since Team 7 was disbanded, and he was a little saddened by how much she'd come to resemble her new sensei, the Godaime Hokage. Would the rest of his students be so different when—if—he saw them again?

His right shoulder and the muscles of his chest protested painfully as he pushed himself up into a sitting position, but he set his teeth and refused to let it show. His head spun, and he had to lock his elbows to prevent them from giving out again. Obito's eye was uncovered, and his slowly-replenishing chakra was draining away again, even in the short time he'd been awake. Gods! He _hated _feeling weak like this!

"Kakashi-sensei, here." Sakura held out a pad of folded cloth topped with a gleaming metal plate. "We found this in your belt pouch. Tsunade-sama had a new headband put on it—it should fit."

He took the forehead protector delicately from her hand, feeling an unaccountable lump rise in his throat. Eight months with Tsunade, eight months of him being no more than a regular jounin with no connection at all to the Hokage's new apprentice—and she still called him _sensei, _still treated him with the same warm respect and concern. Maybe she hadn't changed quite so much. It gave him a little hope.

The cloth band of the new forehead protector was a little narrower than the old one, but it still covered Obito's eye well enough, tied around his head at the same steep angle. He ran his finger-tips from the edge of the engraved metal plate across the thin strip of naked flesh below his eye to the layers of bandages that started just below his cheekbone and swathed his entire lower face. His left cheek still burned with pain, but he could feel something cool and soothing against the raw flesh. "Good thing I wear a mask—this feels like it's gonna scar."

"Not if you keep those bandages on," she replied promptly. "The ointment Tsunade-sama used will prevent scarring as long as you keep the wounds covered for the next few days. Although I'm afraid your chest will still—"

"Look like hell," a woman's smooth voice interjected from the door. "We'll have to see if that'll be any improvement."

"Heh." Kakashi decided to overlook that comment. He was still too light-headed to think of anything biting enough for use in an exchange of barbs with the medic-nin of the Legendary Sannin. "Good morning to you, too, Hokage-sama."

The Godaime Hokage chuckled. Her high-heeled sandals clicked rhythmically as she crossed the floor to stop at his bed-side, just behind her new apprentice. "Sakura, on your way out tell Shizune I won't make it to the operation this morning. She'll have to carry on without me."

"W-what?" Sakura stammered. "My way—? But, Tsunade-sama, I just got here! And I haven't seen Kakashi-sensei for _months—_"

"Get moving," Tsunade said sternly.

Wisely, Sakura got, with a murmured, "See you later, Kakashi-sensei," and a quick brush of her hand across his blankets.

"She's been worried," Tsunade commented as the door slid shut. "By the time the medic team carried you in here last night, you looked like something three days dead." A dangerous tone slid into her voice. "Your heart stopped twice during the surgery, you know."

"Mm." Non-committal was probably the safest form of action when faced with Tsunade's famous temper. He hadn't known; he'd been drifting in and out of consciousness as Gai and the medics carried him back to Konoha, and he had only dim, patch-work memories of arriving at the hospital and hearing medic-nins argue over whether his abused body could stand the shock of general anesthesia for the surgery. Apparently it had—just barely. "Did the lightning mess with my heart, then?"

"You could say that," Tsunade agreed frostily. Then she exploded. "You practically _fried _your nervous system—you barely escaped severe brain damage—and you suffered a near-fatal heart attack while you were rolling around having seizures! You idiot, what were you _thinking_?"

Kakashi sighed. "That's the problem. I wasn't. If I'd sent in a shadow clone—hell, if I'd simply throwna stupid kunai—I could have stopped that missing-nin long enough to give Kiyame a chance. I'm supposed to be a _genius _ninja, and I didn't think at all. I just jumped in—" _Like Naruto would have. _His throat tightened with the old pain.

Tsunade groaned. "I'd hoped you'd rubbed off on Naruto, not the other way round. Well, no, reading those filthy books and being chronically late wouldn't improve him any…"

"He's with Jiraiya now," Kakashi pointed out, swallowing down the knot of pain that invaded his throat at the thought of his former student. "The 'Ero-sennin' will teach Naruto more than I ever could." _Which is why you lost him—because you weren't good enough, not strong enough or smart enough to teach any of them what they needed to know. Sasuke went to Orochimaru for power after nearly killing Naruto with _your _Chidori. Naruto left with Jiraiya to gain the power to bring Sasuke back. And what could I teach Sakura? If I'd been a little better, maybe…but that's the story of my life. Copy Ninja Hatake Kakashi, the genius who's never quite good enough to save the people he loves…_

Perhaps the Hokage sensed some of what he was thinking. After a lifetime as a shinobi, you learned to interpret silences—and Tsunade had been a ninja almost twice as long as Kakashi had been alive. She settled onto the stool Sakura had vacated and ran her fingers lightly through his tangled hair. "You know," she said quietly, "they all made their choices. You gave Sasuke an alternative. You did your best for him."

"My best," Kakashi growled, "wasn't good enough."

"Maybe not." Tsunade shrugged. "But then, none of us are ever good enough, are we? If _I'd _been good enough, Konoha's history might be quite different…" She sighed and leaned back. "In any case, I didn't send Sakura out so we could talk philosophy. I need to know what happened yesterday. You were coming back from a mission in Earth Country—for which I'll need the report later, by the way. How did you run into the ANBU squad?"

He grimaced. "I was taking a shortcut through the trees, and I passed pretty close to where they'd been fighting. Smelled it first, then saw the smoke. Both of the Leaf missing-nin were dead, as well as three of the ANBU—I only recognized Shinui Kaji, the squad captain. I thought at first he'd gotten hit with an explosion note, but it might have been the same jutsu they used against me. He was…very dead."

"Kiyame said he was hit first," Tsunade interjected. "He fell out of a tree, twenty meters above the ground, and they couldn't catch him."

Kakashi tore his mind away from the memory of Kaji's burnt and broken body. "Um, yes. That would make sense. So you've talked to her already?"

"She gave me her report last night, while I was treating her. One deep cut across the left bicep, a hole through her right calf and a stab-wound in her right side—from kunai during the first fight, she said. She can't remember anything after the Cloud killed two of her dogs, though, so I need you to fill in that information."

_Mad golden eyes…clawed hands ripping flesh…crimson tattoos masked by blood… screams cut short as fangs sink in… _Kakashi's left hand tightened on the blankets. "I still don't understand what it was. I didn't sense any change in chakra, but… _Kyouken no Jutsu. _It wasn't just a body-change jutsu, like the Inuzuka clan's standard Quadruped technique. I was watching with the Sharingan, and I saw something inside her opening, like a Celestial Gate. Only it wasn't, because her chakra didn't increase. She just went feral. Mad. She wasn't human anymore."

_"Kyouken no Jutsu,_" Tsunade murmured, as if to herself. "And then?"

"She attacked the one who'd killed her dogs. He had a katana, but he wasn't fast enough. She ripped his throat out with her teeth." He made his voice as flat and emotionless as it would go, trying to distance himself from the memory. "The other two were standing maybe four meters away. One of them started forming seals for the same jutsu he'd used to take me out. _Shuurai no Jutsu. _It's a chakra lightning strike—"

"Which should have killed you." That dangerous note was creeping into the Hokage's voice again. Her attention span was as short as Naruto's, and her emotions as volatile as Sakura's. Kakashi winced. "A lightning bolt to the chest is enough to kill anyone, but this one must have _eaten _your chakra, because you were almost totally drained when they brought you in. You'd also lost almost thirty percent of your heart muscle. I _still _don't understand how you managed to survive long enough for the medic-nins to get to you."

_I wasn't ready to die. _But there was more to it than that; Kakashi had seen plenty of shinobi die who had fought just as desperately to hang on to life. He'd killed more than his fair share of them. Tsunade was right; the lightning strike jutsu should have killed him, _had _been killing him, until—

He chuckled softly. "I guess Kiyame wasn't the only one opening gates. Don't tell Gai, but I think I've discovered a way to open a Celestial Gate without even _thinking _about it." He considered for a moment. "Two, probably. Opening the Heal Gate would explain how I managed to stop the seizures and regain some muscular control. It'd also explain how I weakened again so suddenly. Once that chakra ran out, I didn't have anything left."

Tsunade sighed. "I should be punching you bloody for sheer stupidity, but I have no intention of spending another night bringing you back to life. It was chancy enough the first time—and even worse the second." Her fingers slid into the hollow of his throat, checking his pulse. "Your heart is pumping steadily now, but you won't be completely out of danger for another week. You must have really pushed yourself after opening the Heal Gate."

She was _really _going to bite his head off for this. "There wasn't any alternative. One of the Cloud nin started the seals for the _Shuurai no Jutsu. _If he'd got her, we would've both been dead. I had to give her an opening. So I did _Kanashibari no Jutsu, _and I held 'em until she… removed the threat."

"Kakashi…" The Hokage looked as if she didn't know whether to pound him through the floor or kiss him. "If I had your luck, I'd be the richest woman on the continent. You shouldn't have survived last night!"

"Wasn't luck," he disagreed. "I couldn't give up, so I found the strength to keep going. Although—" he paused, thinking. "All right, there was some luck. If Katsu hadn't got between us when he did, I _would _be dead."

"And here," Tsunade said quietly, "we come to the heart of it. What exactly happened between you and Kiyame?"

_What does she remember? _he wanted to ask, but he was pretty sure Tsunade wouldn't tell him. _Just make your report, _he told himself sternly, _and then ask your own questions. Right now, she needs the answers more than you do. _

"She didn't release the jutsu," he said. "At first, I thought she had—she was over by the edge of the woods, and I could tell she was hurt, so I dug out my aid kit. I covered the Sharingan first and then called to her. She turned, and I realized she was still feral. I pulled out a kunai…"

He stopped. How could he explain what had happened next? _Sorry, Hokage-sama, but I decided I'd rather die than kill a woman I barely knew. The kunai was just for show, really. Maybe I could've thrown it—maybe I could've hit her—but I couldn't have killed her anymore than I can forget Obito. _

Well, did he have to explain that part at all? Kiyame had _approached _him, but she hadn't _attacked, _so his noble intentions were a moot point anyway. "She didn't lunge at me, like she had at the Cloud shinobi. She was slower, wary—I guess my sitting down confused her. Her dog staggered between us when she was about three meters away. He was trying to protect me; he snarled at her, then barked. I think he must've managed to communicate with her somehow, because she shuddered and closed her eyes. When she opened them, they were brown again."

Tsunade let her breath out slowly between her teeth. "She guessed right, then. Blast! We can't afford to lose her, especially not _now!_"

"Lose her?" Kakashi stared at the older woman. "I didn't think she was hurt that badly. Is it because of that jutsu?"

The Hokage hesitated. "That's…classified information. I _can_ tell you that Kiyame is recovering very well; she'll be out of the hospital tomorrow. She has, however, asked to resign from ANBU."

Kakashi wasn't surprised. Most ANBU members didn't last more than a few years, although resignation was less common than death in combat. He'd served for five years, beating the average by nearly eighteen months, and he still wasn't quite sure how he'd managed to come through with a (mostly) intact hide. "Smart girl." Although—losing her entire team probably had a lot to do with it, too. And what was this about _classified_? "Maybe I'll stop by later today. She could probably use a friendly face. Voice." He tugged at the wrappings that covered his face from cheekbones to chin. "How long until these bandages come off?"

Tsunade slapped his hand away. "Do you _want _another reason for wearing a mask? You'll scar worse than Raidou if you keep messing with those. Leave 'em alone till I come back to change them before lunch, or I'll tell Shizune to go through your apartment and throw away all of your books."

Kakashi narrowed his eye. "Sadist," he muttered darkly. Tsunade just laughed.

Gai, Asuma, and Kurenai dropped in shortly after Tsunade left Kakashi's room for the second time that day. She'd kept her promise, re-bandaging his face, chest, and shoulder while murmuring dire threats of exactly what she'd have Shizune do to his precious library if he did anything to strain his damaged muscles or disturb his ointment-smeared bandages. He kept (mostly) silent, his eye fixed on the steaming tray she'd brought with her. It had been, he calculated while Tsunade's threats buzzed around his ears, over thirty-six hours since he'd last eaten. By now even the hospital's indifferent food would taste spectacular.

Unfortunately, although Tsunade had left a wide hole in the bandages over his mouth, neither of them had considered how he was supposed to eat with his right arm immobilized against his chest. He could throw shuriken and punches equally well with either hand, could switch his kunai from right to left without a moment's pause in the ferocity of his attack, but he'd never trained to use chopsticks left-handed. At least his fingers were working well enough to curl around the slender sticks in an _attempt _to hold then in the correct position, although they kept sliding off unfamiliar calluses. He nearly gave up in disgust the third time he dropped a load of rice into his lap, but—_I will _not _be defeated by a pair of chopsticks and a bowl of rice! _If Naruto found out—

No. Don't think of Naruto. Think of awkward wooden sticks refusing to fit comfortably into his hand, think of bland rice and slippery tomato slices, which Sasuke had loved to the point of bringing a whole tomato in his bento every day they were in season—and no, _don't _think of Sasuke…

"Looks like Cloud missing-nins aren't the only things attacking you recently," Asuma remarked, lounging into the room. He indicated the rice scattered over Kakashi's tray and blanketed lap with a jerk of the cigarette clenched in his teeth. "Somebody slip an explosion note into your rice?"

Kakashi sighed and laid the chopsticks down on the tray. "Asuma, your bedside manner stinks."

The bearded jounin shrugged. "I'm a shinobi, not a—"

"A _what?_" Kurenai asked dangerously, elbowing past him. "A creature with even the slightest sense of tact?" Her crimson glare flickered to Kakashi and softened a little. Only a little, though. She was definitely upset. Kurenai was never much good at hiding her emotions. Come to think of it, _none _of the kunoichi Kakashi knew were very good at it. At least when Kurenai was upset she got angry instead of bursting into tears.

Asuma knew the dangers of Kurenai's temper even better than Kakashi did. He threw her a wary glance and drew deeply on his cigarette. "I did chip in for the flowers," he pointed out.

"That's only because _all _the jounin did," Kurenai sniped, then glanced behind her. "Speaking of flowers…"

"Konoha's Beautiful Azure Beast has brought them!" Gai posed in the doorway, holding an enormous bouquet over his head and flashing that obscenely white smile at the other three jounin. But Kakashi didn't miss the quick flick of the black eyes over his body, the slight relaxation when Gai saw for himself that his "eternal rival"—and closest friend, if so simple a word as _friend _could describe the complexity of their relationship—was alive and, if not well, at least somewhere along the path to recovery.

He blinked lazily at Gai, because he knew nothing would infuriate the man more. Then, because after all, Gai deserved _some _kind of reaction for remembering the handkerchief and for hauling his sorry carcass back to Konoha, he drawled, "Flowers? For me? Gai, you _shouldn't _have!"

And because Gai knew that nothing annoyed Kakashi more than his poses, he struck another pose and announced in a booming voice, "I'm not the only one to despair at the loss of your health, Kakashi!" The grin turned sly. "Anko contributed _very _generously."

Kakashi groaned. "Please tell me that's another of your appallingly bad jokes…"

Gai was too noble to smirk. But he did flash Kakashi another sparkling grin as he stooped to pick up a vase from behind the door (where it had probably been hidden so it wouldn't interfere with his pose), plunked the bouquet in the vase, and strode past Kurenai and Asuma to place the flowers on the table beside Kakashi's bed. "Well, generously for Anko, at least."

"Meaning that she gave enough to buy half a daisy," Kurenai muttered.

There was more to this than Kurenai-upset-at-paying-more-than-her-fair-share or Kurenai-worried-about-a-recovering-fellow-shinobi or even Kurenai-during-her-favorite-week-of-the-month. Kakashi pushed the tray aside and fixed his eye on the kunoichi. "Kurenai. What's wrong?"

She folded her arms and looked away. "Nothing. Sorry. I'm just…"

"Is this about Kiyame?" Asuma asked quietly. "You were in her room for nearly an hour before we came here."

Kurenai bit her lip. "She's resigning," she said quietly. "I tried to talk her out of it—we've been friends for years, we became jounin together about three years ago, and I _know _she's one of the best kunoichi we've got—but she's too stubborn. Too scared, maybe." She snorted. "As if _Kiba _could handle the Inuzuka clan. I love that boy, but…"

"What do Kiba and the Inuzuka have to do with Kiyame resigning from ANBU?" Kakashi asked in confusion.

Kurenai's eyes widened. "Have you talked to her yet?"

He shook his head. "I probably won't be able to walk until mid-afternoon. Chakra depletion. But Tsunade-sama mentioned that she was resigning from ANBU. I don't blame her. I did the same, eight years ago."

"Well." Kurenai sighed. "This isn't just ANBU. Kiyame's decided she's not worthyof being either a Konoha kunoichi or the heir to the Inuzuka clan. When I left her, she was ready to turn in her forehead protector and step down in favor of her younger brother, Kiba."

Asuma's cigarette dropped from his gaping mouth. He ground it out hurriedly with his heel and lit another. "_Kiba_? Noisy, hyperactive, arrogant kid with a superiority complex? That _is _how you've described him," he added as Kurenai's mouth twitched angrily.

_Sounds like Naruto, _Kakashi thought. For the first time in almost eight months, the thought came with more amusement than pain. _If Naruto can set his sights on becoming Hokage, why can't Kiba lead the Inuzuka clan?_

_…Because he has an older sister who is a damned good ninja, and _why _is she so intent on resigning every position of responsibility she holds? _

_Is it because of that jutsu?_

"Kurenai," he said quietly, cutting through the kunoichi's indignant defense of her student. "Did she tell you why?"

The crimson-eyed woman's face tightened. She glanced at Asuma, who was studiously attending to his new cigarette, and then at Gai, who was assiduously rearranging the bouquet and pretending not to pay attention. "Not much," she said. "But I saw that clearing, and I can read between the lines. Kiyame's scared of what she did, scared she could do it again."

"What _did _she do?" Gai asked, forgetting that he was pretending not to listen.

Kurenai shook her head. "She wouldn't say. Just that she couldn't trust herself anymore, and that she couldn't put any Konoha nin in that kind of danger again. She's really upset about what happened to you, Kakashi."

"Nothing _did _happen to me," Kakashi protested. He told himself that it was true. "Or at least, none of it was her fault. My own stupidity is mostly to blame." He didn't like lying to his comrades, but Tsunade had asked him not to talk to anyone about Kiyame's 'feral' jutsu, and he could understand why. If the Inuzuka was so upset over what she'd done to the Cloud missing-nin and nearly done to Kakashi… But surely this was an overreaction! For the gods' sakes, Naruto had the _Kyuubi _leaking out of his navel, and _he'd _never decided to lock himself in his apartment for fear of hurting those around him…

Well. Perhaps Naruto wasn't the best example. But he was _an _example, at least, because whatever Kiyame had released inside her with that jutsu, it couldn't be worse than Naruto's demon. And if the blond-haired genin could live and work with the Kyuubi in his belly, surely a fierce, stubborn jounin wouldn't let a brief, bloody bout of insanity destroy her life.

"I think," he said, staring up at the ceiling, "that I _really _need to speak with Inuzuka Kiyame."

* * *

Author's Notes: First (and greatest) thanks go to my beta reader, Phoenix of Eternity, who has encouraged, critiqued, and discussed this work since its genesis. Check out her new story _Anniversaries_—I say with no reservations that it's very good. Second, thanks to everyone who reviewed! I'm thrilled to see how many people are excited to see what happens next. I've basically got the whole story planned out, so really it's just writing that will take the time… Anyway, from here on the genre becomes more Angst/Romance, as Kakashi and Kiyame both struggle to deal with their demons.

_Chevira Lowe: _Thanks so much! I really admire your own stories, and I'm so glad you're enjoying mine. Sorry that Kakashi went down so easily, but to me, anyway, what happened _after _he goes down is more interesting. He may seem lazy and laid back, but he has a core of steel…and he doesn't _ever _give up. So I guess I was trying to focus more on how he deals with "defeat" than on his mad fighting skills (which everyone knows about already).

_Mechalich: _You're right about the missing nins, and I'm embarrassed that I hadn't thought of that. You're also totally right about the effect this fight will have on Kiyame. From here on, the story branches into more of a "deal with the demons inside you" fic—and no, the demons are _figurative, _not literal. We don't need any more Youma popping up. Anyway, thanks so much for your kind words!

_Daniel of Lorien_: Thanks—I think so too! Or at least, I hope it does…

_PinkyMcCoversong_: I'll do my best to update as soon as I get the next chapter written—I'm just thrilled that people are actually reading and _enjoying _this story.

_FireDragonBL: _No, Team 7 isn't dead. This fic is set in the two-year interim after the team breaks up, with Sasuke going to Orochimaru, Naruto leaving with Jiraiya, and Sakura training under Tsunade. So Kakashi's on his own… And you're right that if he were at the top of his form, he'd notice the hidden enemies. However, even Kakashi makes mistakes (as we see with Zabuza, Itachi, and Kabuto). And however fast he is, he can't outrun a lightning bolt. Don't worry, he's going to beat himself over the head for it quite enough. Anyway, thanks for reading!

_Clemence: _Thanks for your comments. My beta was very pleased with Gai's handkerchief too, so I'm glad to see that you agree with her. I've always liked Gai, even though he _is _really bizarre—but then, what ninja is normal?


	4. Arguments

Disclaimer: I love _Naruto. _Unfortunately, I don't own any of it. Tsume isn't even quite mine; I saw the name around and liked it, so I "borrowed" it. However, I do lay claim to Inuzuka Kiyame's current incarnation, and to _Shuurai no Jutsu _and _Kyouken no Jutsu. _

Author's Note: This chapter was gonna be a lot longer, but it just seemed to end nicely here. So eh, whatever. Enjoy! And see Author's Notes at the end for reviewer comments.

* * *

Chapter Four: Arguments

Half-way up the stairs, Kakashi started to wonder if visiting Kiyame was really such a good idea after all.

His face hurt and his chest hurt, and the four-hour nap he'd taken after his visitors left hadn't seemed to refresh him at all. Worse yet, the pretty nurse he'd charmed into giving him a crutch ("Just for short walks around the room, I need to get my strength back as fast as possible.") had refused to provide him with any clothes ("Your old ones are ruined, and besides, you're not going to be leaving your room, Hatake-san."). So he was condemned to hobble down the sterile halls of the Konoha Hospital dressed in only a pair of pale blue pajama bottoms and an impressive array of bandages. Oh well. The bandages offered nearly as much covering as his usual turtle-neck shirt and mask, anyway. And it wasn't like Kiyame hadn't seen him in much less…dear gods, that sounded wrong. Well, actually it sounded like something out of _Icha Icha Paradise, _but _that _was something you tried not to associate with your fellow jounin, especially those with chancy tempers.

He groaned. Mental babbling was not a good sign. _And of course, it doesn't help that I can't even remember what she looks like, apart from tattoos and a lot of blood and—stop it!_

Kurenai had told him Kiyame's room number before she left, sandwiched in between quiet but sincere thanks for his willingness to talk to her friend. The Inuzuka was in room 305, a floor above and half a hall away from his room. He'd had to take the back stairs, since both the main staircase and the elevators were likely to be full of doctors and nurses who would immediately send him back to bed. It added another slow, painful five minutes to the trip, and it made him feel ridiculously like Gai, pushing himself past the brink of endurance for some idiotic self-assigned challenge. At least the hospital was fairly quiet during the hour before supper-time, and he ran into no one as he made his limping way down the hall, up the stairs, and through another hall. _Two _crutches would have made it a heck of a lot easier, but his right arm was still bound tightly to his chest, and Tsunade would have his hide if she discovered he'd messed with the bandages. She'd probably have his hide for creeping out of bed early anyway, but a ninja's life was full of risks.

The hall outside Kiyame's room was empty but for an enormous mound of black and white fur curled up beside the closed door. An Inuzuka dog, Kakashi realized as he came closer, which meant that there was probably another Inuzuka visiting Kiyame. The dog seemed to be sleeping, his scarred head pillowed on his massive paws. But even asleep, his missing ear and the black patch over his right eye gave him a menacing air that reminded Kakashi a little of Dokuga, the most vicious of his Earth Tracking Fang summon dogs. Of course, Dokuga would _never _let anyone walk up on her…but apparently the Inuzuka dog wouldn't either. As Kakashi approached, the left eye flickered open, fixing him with the aggressive direct glare of an alpha male to a challenger. Which meant that this dog _was _the alpha male for his pack, which meant…

Kakashi sighed. "Kuromaru, right? Partner of Inuzuka Tsume, the clan head?" He balanced on his crutch long enough to hold out his empty left hand. "Hatake Kakashi. I'm here to see Inuzuka Kiyame."

The dog gave his hand a cursory sniff and then settled back on his haunches beside the door, obviously losing interest. Kakashi reached for the door handle—then stopped, as the low murmur of voices beyond the door rose into shouts. No Inuzuka had ever been accused of being too quiet, and these two were pure Inuzuka and pure fury.

"…let yourself get caught like that! Dear gods, Kiyame, you're a _jounin, _you're in _ANBU _for all the gods' sakes—"

"Not anymore! Mom, _listen _to me!"

He recognized that voice; he had last heard it rough with shock and grief, pleading with her dog to hold on to life. Inuzuka Kiyame, which meant that the first speaker was her mother, Tsume. Both the women had unusually low voices, but Kiyame's was a shade lighter, a bit smoother, a little less angry and more desperate.

"—and then to use _that _jutsu, when you know what it's done, when you _know _it's forbidden, when you've _seen _what it did to—"

"That's why I used it! I had nothing left to lose, it was the only way I could be sure of taking them all out—"

"Nothing left to lose? Damn you! What about Katsu! What about Hatake? What about the _clan_? Can you imagine what it would have done to Kiba, losing—"

"Akira and Amaya were dead. Katsu was dying. Hatake-san—" The young woman's voice faltered for the first time, but she regained control with the next breath. Her voice was steel. "He would have done what he had to do. What the others did."

Kuromaru's ear twitched. His nose crinkled, baring slivers of fangs in the hint of a snarl. Kakashi watched the dog warily. Kuromaru seemed to have forgotten about the jounin…but he could remember at any time, and the results might not be happy.

"Except he didn't." Tsume's voice was always harsh, but now emotion roughened it still further. "Tsunade-sama told me what he said. You turned on him, Kiyame. And he _didn't _kill you. The gods know he could have—in that state, you had no mind to dodge _with—_and he didn't kill you! If Katsu hadn't…"

Kiyame took a deep, shuddering breath. "And that's why. If Katsu hadn't dragged himself between us, I would have ripped Hatake-san apart. Don't you see? I'm too dangerous. I can't trust myself anymore. I broke the seal, Mom!"

"You've giving up." Her mother's words cracked like a whip of ice. "I didn't raise you to be a coward, Kiyame."

"You think this doesn't take courage?" Kiyame's voice trembled with fury. "You think this is _easy _for me? You've got no right to judge me! _You've _never ripped a man's throat out with your teeth and woken up to realize you _enjoyed _it!"

_Mad golden eyes staring straight into his…a predator's low growl rumbling in her chest…crimson tattoos almost invisible beneath the blood that masked her face… _Kakashi shook his head, trying to rid his mind of the images. _She beat it, _he told himself sternly. But he remembered keeping the kunai, and he knew why she couldn't be sure.

"No one else has survived this jutsu, Mom," Kiyame was saying in a low voice. "_No one. _There's a reason it's forbidden, there's a reason it's classified as an assassination-suicide kinjutsu. It's because no one else has ever been known to recover his mind from the madness. So how can I know that I _am _sane? How can I know that seal won't break again someday? I _can't _risk that."

"So you desert your duties," Tsume said bitingly. "You flee every shred of responsibility you have—quit ANBU, turn in your forehead protector, abdicate your position as heir—and what good does that do? You can't turn back time, Kiyame, and you _certainly _can't take Katsu and run off into the wild to live like the feral you've convinced yourself you are."

"I'm not fit for any of those duties! I'm not _safe! _We don't know how the seal works after it's been broken once, we don't know if it can ever be whole again. At any moment I could snap. The slightest stress, and I'm feral again. And that time, there may not be a Katsu to bring me back."

There was a long pause. Kakashi could hear the whisper of cloth against skin on the other side of the door as one of the Inuzuka women moved. Then, slowly, Tsume asked, "What about Kiba? He's got neither the training nor the temperament to lead the clan—as much as he likes to play alpha, he'd make an even worse mess of it than—than _Kuromaru _would! And think of the example you're setting for him. No loyalty to duty, no loyalty to pack—"

Kiyame's voice was as sharp as the blade of her katana. "Would you rather have another Uchiha Itachi on your hands?"

Fist hit flesh so hard that Kakashi winced. Kuromaru bristled and glared, baring a little more fang. For a moment there was a stunned silence, broken only by the two women's heavy breathing and by the beginning vibrations of the dog's growl. Then Tsume said vehemently, "Don't even think that. Don't you _dare _compare yourself to that— —"

_Now _that _was an impressive bit of language, _Kakashi thought. He could see where Kiyame had inherited her penchant for fierce and creative swearing. Not even Anko could string so many expletives together without repeating herself once.

Kiyame sighed. "Mom…" She took a deep breath, and suddenly her voice sharpened. "There's someone out there. Damn! It's _him!_"

"Kuromaru!" Tsume barked.

The teeth were _all _there, in a display to eclipse even Dokuga's. Kakashi realized uneasily that while he was one-armed, weaponless, and bound to a crutch, Kuromaru was in top fighting trim, outweighed Kakashi by at least twenty kilos, and probably wouldn't hesitate to attack on his partner's command. Kakashi's throat might not be in immediate danger—but if he tried to open the door, he'd probably lose the hand.

"Inuzuka Tsume-sama, Kiyame-san," he called loudly, "it's Hakate Kakashi." _As if they hadn't already told that from your smell, idiot. _"I'd like to speak with Kiyame—"

"Go _away!_" Kiyame yelled.

Kuromaru snarled. His single eye closed into a glowing slit, and his ear flattened to his skull. Kakashi took a hopping step backward and thunked his crutch into the wall. _That _certainly provoked a reaction. There was a strangled growl from inside the room, and a kunai smashed through the thin sliding door and embedded itself in the opposite wall. Kuromaru's snarl climbed a few decibels.

Kakashi decided that the best tactical decision would be to leave _now. _Still, he couldn't help but give a parting shot. "I'll come again when you're feeling better, Kiyame-san."

A second kunai joined the first. Kuromaru gathered himself for the spring. Kakashi didn't _quite _run for the stairs, but he probably set a new record for the 50-meter hobble.

He slowed down at the top of the staircase, when it became obvious that Kuromaru wasn't following. Navigating the stairs was tricky enough without adding the extra factor of speed. He was sweating and breathing hard by the time he reached the bottom, and he wanted nothing more than to collapse on his bed and plan his next assault. Unfortunately, the pretty nurse who'd given him the crutch caught up to him halfway down the hall. She wasn't nearly so pretty when she was yelling. She marched him back to his room, confiscated his crutch, and ordered him to stay in bed for the next twenty-four hours under pain of confiscating all his books as well. _Tsunade must have been talking with her, _Kakashi thought darkly as the nurse left with a sniff and a glare.

At least Kiyame had only threatened him with _bodily _harm.

He sat on his bed and stared out the open window, watching but not really seeing a pair of starlings quibbling in the branches of a nearby tree. Before his talk with Kurenai, he'd never expected to exchange more than a few words with Kiyame, expressing his regret for her loss (and perhaps digging a little to find out more about that baffling jutsu of hers). Now—now he was genuinely concerned and curious.The conversation—alright, the argument—he'd, ah, _overheard_ had left him with even more questions than it answered.

Kakashi liked answers. And he was willing to do just about anything to get them.

* * *

Author's Note: As always, first thanks go to Phoenix, my beta reader, who has squashed a great many horrible ideas and encouraged some good ones. The general lack of over-angsting/melodrama in this chapter may be attributed to her, since she says I'm still not to be trusted with angst. 

_Daniel of Lorien: _Thanks for the review! I'm glad to see you like where I'm going with the story.

_PinkyMcCoversong: _Thanks again! I hope Kiyame in this chapter lives up to your expectations…and I'm sorry we never actually got to see her. Oh well, chalk it up to my over-liking for suspense…

_Chevira Lowe: _Wow. This is the kind of review I dream of. --:does Happy Dance of Joy:-- I'm so glad to see that I got Sakura and Tsunade right, since I was really worried about writing Tsunade. And Kurenai…yes, she does need hugs. I am also doing my best not to over-angst—and Phoenix will do _her_ best to prevent me from doing so.

_Kakoii Kakashi: _Here's your update, then!


	5. Visits

Disclaimer: If you've got this far, you should know that I don't own _Naruto. _Apparently I do own Kiyame, however, because….well, you'll see.

Author's Notes: Anyone with access to the new data book will know by now that I have committed an unpardonable crime. My only excuse is that I started this fic before the data book's release, and that I only _know _about my sin because of the goodness of kimi no vanilla, who translated the relevant sections for me. To set the record straight: Kiba's older sister's name is Inuzuka Hana; she's an 18-year-old chuunin, and her three dogs are known as the Haimaru San Kyoudai, or the Three Grey Brothers. (But I was right about Tsume's name!) I suppose from this point Kiyame is officially an Original Character… Which is why it took me so long to get this chapter out. But I am _not _going to abandon it; this fic will be finished if I have to write the last words in blood, à la summoning contract!

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Chapter Five: Visits

Kakashi left the hospital two days later, after a long argument with two nurses and a doctor that culminated in the jounin flatly refusing to stay in the hospital bed any longer. The doctor threw up his hands at last and declared Kakashi a lost cause; he wasn't going to get in the way of an elite ninja who wanted out. He added sourly that probably only Godaime herself would succeed in forcing the Copy Ninja to stay in bed. Kakashi knew that wasn't true, but he kept his mouth shut and hobbled around the room collecting the few mementoes his visitors had left. He didn't want the doctor to bring Gai into this, after all.

The nurses were more persistent, especially the pretty one who'd confiscated his crutch two days before. When he asked politely for its return, she folded her arms and glared. "You only came out of surgery three days ago," she snapped. "You shouldn't even be _thinking _of going home."

"I'm sorry," Kakashi said, and translocated into the hallway to steal a crutch from the supply closet. He didn't bother going back into the room.

His apartment seemed much further from the hospital than he remembered. The translocation had cost more of his limited chakra than he could spare, and he was forced to limp slowly through the streets, leaning on his crutch. At least they'd supplied him with clothes—a standard-issue jounin uniform and vest to replace the ones he'd lost—and the bandages still swathed enough of his face to make up for the lack of his mask.

The nurse was probably right, he admitted reluctantly as he neared his boarding house after three agonizingly slow blocks. Tsunade had pronounced his internal injuries completely healed at his check-up that morning, but his chakra levels were another matter altogether. He'd cajoled Sakura into a few extra healing sessions, and he'd tried his own hand at healing his sliced shoulder and the massive burn on his chest. Result: his heart was pumping as steadily as a fifteen-year-old's, his shoulder was only slightly painful, his chest looked…almost human, and his chakra reservoir was just shy of empty. Well, there was nothing to stop him from collapsing in bed as soon as he got home. As long as it was his _own_ bed, with his own books and his own rules.

Well, there were the boarding house rules, but Fujiwara-san had been renting rooms to shinobi for nearly twenty years, and she'd learned to tolerate their…idiosyncrasies.

Bed was definitely in order. He nodded a greeting to Fujiwara-san, who was wiping down the tables in the dining room after lunch. She worked her way around some exhausted young chuunin who had fallen asleep with his head on the table, and came towards him with a smile.

"Hatake-san! It's good to see you back. Maito-san said you were injured…" Her eyes rested questioningly on his crutch, then slid up to his bandaged face.

He grimaced and bit his lip as scabs pulled on his healing cheek. Fujiwara Keiko ran the cleanest and quietest shinobi boarding house in Konoha, and she made an eggplant miso soup to kill for. She also displayed a distressing tendency to mother her boarders, which generally confined itself to plenty of soup and hot water bottles but could extend to foul-tasting herbal teas and worse advice. (The woman would _not _understand that you couldn't console a grieving ninja by saying that it wasn't his fault his teammates were dead, and anyway, they were in a better place now…)

"Not so badly," he lied. "Hokage-sama took care of it easily." And if she wondered where he'd been for the past three nights, well, let her wonder. It was all probably classified by now anyway. "But I'm pretty tired. I'll see you tomorrow, Fujiwara-san." He waved vaguely and hobbled off toward the stairs.

He was two doors away from his room (and bed!) when Gai jogged out of the bathroom, wet hair still dripping from his shower. The older jounin paused mid-stride to stare at Kakashi. "_You _are supposed to be in the hospital for another three days," he said accusingly. "Genma and I were going to come visit you tonight!"

"Beat you to it," Kakashi muttered, fumbling with his doorknob. "Oi, Gai, I'm just gonna collapse for a while. Tell Fujiwara-san not to save me any dinner."

"You'll need it," Gai objected with a frown. "The best way to rebuild your strength—apart from training, of course—is to eat healthy and regular meals." His eyes lit. "I shall make my special dumplings to aid in your recovery!"

Kakashi winced. He'd eaten Gai's dumplings once, before he'd known that there was a reason why the other man lived at Fujiwara's instead of in a regular apartment. (Not that Kakashi was much of a cook himself, of course, but he knew good food when he tasted it.) "Uh…thanks. But no." He propped his crutch up against the bookcase by the door, plopped the flowers and the books onto his desk, peeled off his vest and his forehead protector, and took two steps across the floor before sinking onto his bed. Gods, it felt good…

"Shut the door when you go out," he directed his pillow. Gai gave a muffled laugh.

"Do you plan to sleep with your sandals on?"

He shrugged his left shoulder and buried his face in the pillow. "Too much effort to take 'em off."

Gai's strong fingers wrapped around Kakashi's ankles and tugged the sandals off. "Sleep well, Kakashi. I'll come by in the morning. We'll have to train early and often to get you back up to speed!"

"Hn," Kakashi told his pillow.

Gai chuckled again as the door snicked shut behind him.

-

When Gai came by the next morning, Kakashi was already gone. The curtains flapped in the breeze from the open window, and a note lay on the desk beside the empty vase, held down by a well-thumbed copy of _Icha Icha Paradise. _

_ Gai_

_ Sorry to cancel our date. I remembered a previous engagement. _

_Kakashi_

Kakashi reached the Heroes' Stone as the last blush of dawn was still fading from the sky. Rin had always liked this time of the morning best; he'd often arrived at their team meeting spot only to find her already there, watching the sun rise.

He'd never asked her what she loved so much about sunrises. It was #137 on his constantly-growing list of regrets.

The bouquet the other jounin had given him was still at the peak of its bloom; he'd plucked off only a few wilted petals on the way here. He laid the flowers at the base of the memorial and stepped back, hands stuffed in his pockets, face once more expressionless under the black mask.

There were three new names carved into the face of the stone. Little sparkles of rock-dust still clung glittering in the engraved characters. _Shinui Kaji… Tanaka Kazushi… Matsumoto Ichiro…_

Kiyame's ANBU team. They must have held the memorial service while he was still in the hospital. He wondered absently if Kiyame had attended. The public memorials were supposed to be more for the survivors than the deceased, but he'd never found that they helped much.

"What would you do?" he asked the stone quietly, his eye unconsciously seeking out the familiar names. _Obito, Rin, Sensei… _"Sensei, you always knew what to say. Rin, you never even needed to say anything at all. And Obito…"

Obito hadn't known what to say. But he'd said it anyway, breaking through Kakashi's barriers with all the energy his warm heart possessed. Maybe on purpose, maybe on accident, he'd found the words that would cut Kakashi to the core as nothing else could.

"_I believe that the White Fang is a true hero…"_

"Maybe it's none of my business," he told the stone. "Probably it's not. But none of you would have sat back and watched, would you? Obito, you'd be charging in there already." Just the way he'd charged through life and into death, because Obito never held back from helping anyone who needed it.

Neither had Rin, or Sensei. All three of them had given their lives to protect others, to defend those who couldn't defend themselves. In one way or another, they'd all died for Kakashi.

It wasn't too much to ask that he live for them.

-

The Inuzuka estate was the largest in Konoha, appropriate for a clan who augmented their substantial numbers with an even more substantial pack of nin-dogs. The walled compound sprawled across acres of the forested land on Konoha's western edge, encompassing private training fields, outbuildings, and what was quite probably the largest kennels complex on the continent.

Kakashi had very dim memories of coming here as a child, walking proudly at his father's side. The Hatake family had had close ties with the Inuzuka—back when there had _been _a Hatake family, before Sakumo's disgrace. Sakumo had been good friends with the former head of the Inuzuka clan; Kakashi even had one or two memories of Inuzuka Shikon entering the Hatake house, one hand resting on the head of his enormous grey dog as he shucked his sandals at the door and traded cheerful insults with Sakumo.

But Sakumo had been dead for twenty years, and Shikon for eleven, and the comforting home of Kakashi's childhood was a memory far fainter than that of the night he'd come home to find his father sprawled in a pool of blood on the floor of the family dojo.

He pushed those thoughts away sharply. _Here and now, _he told himself, and slipped through the half-open gate into the Inuzuka courtyard.

It was a large, open yard with a packed-earth floor, surrounded on three sides by a two-story house with numerous doors and opening onto the courtyard. An archway at the back gave him a glimpse into another yard and what looked like several more wings. A handful of dogs lay scattered around the courtyard, basking in the warm morning sunshine, and two half-naked children romped with a litter of brown puppies in the center of the yard. A brown bitch watched them with an indulgent eye that sharpened noticeably when she scented Kakashi. She lounged to her feet and strolled towards the gate, displaying long white fangs in an immense yawn.

"Hatake Kakashi," he told her, extending a hand. "I'm here to see Inuzuka Kiyame."

The dog's ears twitched back, then perked forward again as she sniffed his hand. Her fringed tail wagged briefly, and she nudged his hand with her nose before turning and trotting towards the back of the yard. He followed bemusedly, side-stepping the wrestling children and puppies that spilled across his path. The children's cheeks were already tattooed with the crimson fangs of their clan, he noted, although neither of them could be older than two. Their shrill voices rose high in a mixture of childish babbling and uncannily accurate barks.

Kakashi was beginning to revise his opinion of the Inuzuka, and he'd added quite a few more questions to his mental list.

His guide stopped at the archway that tunneled under the house's second story and into a second, smaller courtyard. There were more dogs in this courtyard, but they sat or lay in furry heaps around the walls, dark eyes fixed on the two women sparring in the center of the courtyard.

Kakashi recognized Inuzuka Tsume immediately; he'd never worked with the short, wiry woman, but he'd seen her at enough village functions to have a healthy respect for her temper and for her skills as a tracker and fighter. She seemed almost evenly matched with her opponent, though, a taller, slender young woman in a black tank-top and shorts. The younger woman's long dark ponytail whipped around her shoulders as she dodged a savage blow, thick locks sliding over her bandaged left bicep and ANBU tattoo. Her face was set, eyes narrowed in concentration, lower lip caught between her teeth. The crimson fangs on her cheeks seemed to blaze against her tanned skin.

He hadn't planned to interrupt. But the dog at his side barked sharply, and the fighting women broke apart, pivoting to face him. Tsume's shoulders slumped as she recognized him, and she lifted a weary hand to wipe sweat from her brow. Kiyame stiffened. The dog barked again reprovingly and thwacked her tail across the back of Kakashi's thighs. He took a startled step forward, and neither he nor Tsume missed Kiyame's flinch.

But she didn't run, or yell, or attack, or do any of the dozen things he'd half-expected. She just stood there, hands fisted at her sides, head thrown up, eyes wide and strained, looking like nothing so much as a cornered wolf.

Kakashi bit his lip, and tasted blood.

"Hatake Kakashi." Tsume's voice cut through the tension like a katana through flesh. Her tone was even, refusing to hint at her thoughts. "We didn't expect to see you here."

He wondered what they _had _expected—for him to turn tail and run after what he'd seen and heard? (Well, he had…hastily retreated, but that had more to with avoiding Kuromaru's teeth in his throat than with…anything else.) He rubbed the back of his head with one hand and turned over a few possible responses. "Sorry to surprise you," he said at last. "I wanted to talk to Kiyame, and this seemed to be the place to find her."

Tsume cast a quick glance at her daughter. After a long moment she said quietly, "He has the right."

Kiyame shivered. "I know," she said. Her hands clenched convulsively, then relaxed with an obvious effort. She didn't meet Kakashi's eyes, but she hitched one shoulder slightly as she turned, inviting him to follow her into the house.

Kakashi began to wonder what he'd gotten himself into.

* * *

Author's Notes: Many thanks to Phoenix, my beta reader; to Chevira Lowe, who graciously agreed to take a look; to kimi no vanilla for help with names; and to all those who've taken the time to read and review, even if I couldn't directly answer you. Criticism is a wonderful thing.

_Chevira Lowe: _I did it, see? I hope you're happy…And I promise, you will find out about the seal in the next chapter!

_crazy-antman: _I leave it up to your imagination. That's the wonderful thing about dashes, yes?

_link no miko: _I'm so glad you like it! I'm trying to keep my take on Kakashi unfiltered by all the other (excellent!) fics I've read on him, so hopefully his blend of "uber!serious and quirky" will stay consistant!

_Luneko: _Agreed: the _Kyouken no Jutsu _is monumentally cool. It causes monumental problems, though, as you will see…in a few weeks, when I get Chapter 6 written!


	6. Answers

Disclaimer: If I owned _Naruto, _minor characters like Inuzuka Hana (the "real" Inuzuka Kiyame of this story) would play a much bigger role. Fortunately I don't, which means I can spend my spare time fleshing them out in my stories instead!

Author's Notes: Apologies to all those whom I've kept waiting for this chapter. Believe me, you haven't suffered nearly as much as I have. And…just so you won't suffer anymore: This is the last chapter. The fic has changed a great deal in the writing, and yet I'm pleased with how it's turned out. Not at all as I expected it to go, but, well, life's like that…

* * *

Chapter Six: Answers

The house was dark and cool, with wooden floorboards scarred by generations of dogs' claws, simple and sturdy furniture, and walls hung with landscape paintings surprising in both their number and beauty. Kakashi followed Kiyame through an empty sitting room, down a narrow hallway, and past what looked like a mess hall in which several older clan members were still lingering over their morning tea with their dogs dozing at their feet. They entered another small courtyard—not a training yard this time, but a garden with a gently murmuring fountain and a cherry tree just shedding the last of its blossoms over a stone bench and the dog who lay drowsing in the sun.

Kakashi recognized the dog instantly. The grey and white coat and wolf-like build were distinctive enough, even without the bandages still wrapping his belly and the lazy, unconcerned flick of his ears as they approached. He waited till Kiyame had sunk down onto the bench, then lifted his head from his paws just enough to rub his cheek against her shin. Her face softened; she bent to scratch his ears with an almost-smile momentarily touching her lips. But even after her hand stilled, she didn't look back up at Kakashi.

He remained a meter or so away, hands stuffed in his pockets, body relaxed in a deceptively casual slouch that concealed the tension coiling within him. "How's he doing?" he asked after a while, nodding towards the dog Katsu.

"He'll recover," Kiyame said quietly, staring down at the hand folded white-knuckled in her lap. She looked almost defeated, head bent, shoulders bowed as if under some great weight, eyes hidden behind long dark lashes. The kunoichi he remembered—the proud, savage woman who had defied her enemies with such courage, the ANBU who had protected him when he'd gone down, even the woman who had thrown kunai at him through the door and who had sparred so fiercely and confidently with her mother only a few minutes earlier—that kunoichi seemed to have retreated from the field, leaving only shame and fear and despair behind.

It was all _wrong_—her unnatural submissiveness, the oppressive silence that hung heavily between them, even Katsu's peevish whine as he nudged the hand that should have known better than to stop stroking him. Kakashi thought suddenly of Sasuke's sullen, straining face and wild words the night before he'd left, the night that Kakashi had tried and failed to make his student see that there was more to life than revenge. Sasuke and Kiyame could hardly be more different, but Kakashi still felt a coldness settle in the pit of his stomach. Another failure here would be just as personally devastating—for both of them.

But a little of the animation had returned to Kiyame's face at her dog's whine. She even glanced up to meet Kakashi's eye as she rubbed the furry grey head. The faint almost-smile returned to hover on her lips for half a breath.

"Katsu says I should get on with it," she said, scratching behind the alert grey ears. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "This—this isn't something that I would—that I _could _tell anyone else. The higher-ranking shinobi of my clan know, and Sandaime did—and Godaime knows now, too. No one else." She gave him an odd, measuring look. "But I'm not sure I need to tell you that."

"Just as well," Kakashi said mildly. He considered the bench for a moment, then gave a mental shrug and stepped over Katsu to sit beside the young woman. She stiffened but did not pull away. He could see the pulse fluttering at the base of her throat as she chose her next words.

"That jutsu I used—the _Kyouken no Jutsu—_I'm not the only one who's used it. Just the only one to survive." She paused, scratching under the hinge of Katsu's jaw, staring at the strong brown fingers moving rhythmically through the short fur. Kakashi sat listening, feet apart, elbows on thighs, gloved hands dangling between his legs. He knew that she knew he'd heard this information—albeit in a fragmented and unorthodox fashion—before; Kuromaru had almost certainly told Tsume exactly when the Copy Nin had begun to listen. Kiyame was simply setting up the background for her story now.

And unless he was very much mistaken, it was one of the hardest things she had ever done.

"You knew my father," she said at last, half a question. Kakashi didn't blink at the change in direction. And instead of simply replying "yes" and leaving it at that, he returned honesty for honesty.

"He was a friend of my father's," he said. "He was away on a mission when my father killed himself."

Even after twenty years, it was hard to think it, harder still to say it. But he had no right to demand this brutal honesty from her if he was not willing to offer it himself. And when a little of the tension eased out of her face and her lips parted in a quick, silent "Oh," he knew it had been the right thing to say.

"My father was a good ninja," she said after a moment, but this time her eyes stayed locked on his masked face when she spoke, instead of evading his gaze and slipping away. "Good enough to be the Clan Head, good enough to be one of Konoha's elite." Now at last her eyes dropped down to the dog at her feet, and her voice dropped as well. "But not quite good enough to save one of his teammates and Tetsu, his dog." Her face was dry and cold, her voice as steady as if she were reciting some memorized story. "He invoked the _Kyouken no Jutsu. _When he'd killed their attackers, he turned on his teammates." Her eyes fixed on the thumb rubbing in little circles between Katsu's ears. "There was no one to pull him out of it. His teammates killed him. They put his name on the Heroes' Stone anyway, and both of his teammates died within the year. Only my mother and a few of the clan elders and the Hokage knew the truth."

Her eyes lifted to his again at last, cold and clear and so full of remembered pain that he found himself unconsciously rubbing his hands together, flaking off blood twenty years old. Hatake Sakumo hadn't expected his son to be the first to find him. Kakashi hadn't expected his father—his glorious, revered, _worshipped _father—to fail and then compound his failure. He wondered if Inuzuka Shikon had ever expected that he would die at his teammates' hands, and if he had ever dreamed that his best friend's son would escape the same fate by a thread as narrow as a dog's bark.

"The _Kyouken_—isn't a regular jutsu," Kiyame was continuing. "It's a kinjutsu, forbidden because until now, for the three who've used it, it was an assassination-suicide technique. We don't teach it. But my mother thought I should know how my father died." A muscle twitched in her jaw, but her eyes never left his. "I expected you to do as his teammates—and my great-uncle's, and his grandfather's—had done."

"I don't let my comrades die," he said simply.

Her mouth tightened. "I wasn't your comrade. I was a mad wolf. There was _nothing_—" She stopped, sighed, returned her hands to a clenched knot in her lap and rubbed Katsu's back with a bare foot instead. Kakashi noted the bandages wrapped around her calf, protecting an injury too minor for chakra healing.

"You are a ninja of Konoha," he pointed out. "That makes you a comrade, whether you're in your right mind or not."

"No, look—" She let out her breath again between her teeth in a long, slow hiss. "You have the Sharingan, don't you? You watched me invoke the jutsu. You saw the seal break."

"I saw something release," he admitted. "Like one of Maito Gai's Celestial Gates—something not even the Sharingan can copy."

She smiled wearily. "No, one clan of berserkers is enough. Look. These—" She tapped one finger against the crimson fang tattooed on her cheek. "These aren't just clan markers, like the Uchiha fans or something. They're seals—physical manifestations of the binding seal given to each Inuzuka immediately after birth. The _Kyouken no Jutsu _breaks the seal and releases the madness. It turns us—it turned _me_—into some twisted version of our earliest ancestors. At least according to the stories the elders tell." She turned her hand, clenching and opening a fist, staring at her fingers as if she half-expected glittering claws to sprout from their tips.

"Your earliest ancestors?" Kakashi hadn't heard those stories, which wasn't surprising; it was obviously a clan affair, and no clan liked to share its secrets. But if Kiyame has already acknowledged that he had _a right to know, _then he wasn't ashamed to pry. "What are these stories?"

"Tales of the founding of the clan," Kiyame said without looking up. "Of the kunoichi who was lost and wounded in the mountains, hunted by enemies, fighting for her survival. Of the wolf demon-spirit who came to her aid, and allowed her to take shelter with him and his pack of mortal wolves through the winter. Of how he could take the shape of a man. And of how, when the kunoichi left the mountains in the spring, the wolf demon sent half of his wolves with her to guard both her and the child she carried." She smiled sadly, and Kakashi saw the glimmer of the canine teeth just long and sharp enough to be called fangs. "He taught her the seal before she left. He knew what the child would be like, half-mortal, half-demon. I suppose it amused him to let his demon-child out on the world, but he must have cared for the mother enough to teach her how she could control her child's madness. Maybe he did love her." She shrugged. "Of course the question's pointless if it _is _just a story after all. But…it explains a great many things."

Like fangs, and brown eyes that turned gold, and nin-dogs, and red fang-tattoos that held back the blood-lust of a rabid beast—or a demon. Kakashi laid his hands on his knees and watched the sunlight glitter from the metal plates on the backs of his gloves. He said thoughtfully, "And so the _Kyouken no Jutsu _breaks the seal and releases whatever particle of the wolf-demon's spirit still remains in its descendents? _That's _the madness that terrifies you so much you'd rather resign from ANBU and from the shinobi corps and from your duty as clan heir than face?"

Kiyame threw up her head, strong jaw tightening, dark eyes flashing. "I'm _not _terrified—" she said hotly, but Kakashi's words cut across hers.

"I taught the Kyuubi vessel. _He _knew what was inside him, and he _knew _when it leaked. And I don't think Naruto ever thought once of giving up and hiding himself away because he was too dangerous."

"That's not—" she began furiously, but he cut her off again.

"Naruto's goal is to become the Hokage, and I won't be surprised when he makes it. Neither will Godaime-sama, or Jiraiya, or _anyone _who knows him. And who, incidentally, know what's inside him. Is what's inside _you _any more dangerous than the Nine-tails, Kiyame-san? Or are you simply more frightened?"

The goad of his last words bit as deeply as he'd meant them too. There was nothing of despair or fear or self-hatred in her eyes anymore; the rage that burned in their dark depths and that curled her lips back from her white fangs was purely for him. "If you think I'm a coward," she snarled, "you're a fool."

"It doesn't take any courage to give up," Kakashi said bitingly.

Kiyame lunged to her feet, pale with fury. "You _dare,_" she said, hands clenched into fists so tight that the corded muscles sprang out in her arms. Katsu whined in protest and tried to push himself up after her, but Kakashi pressed a hand to the dog's hindquarters.

"Down, boy," he murmured, eyes still fixed on Kiyame. "Don't worry about her. She's still too full of herself. She'll be back and sulking in a little while. Maybe it's for the best." He shoved himself upright, watching the woman. _Just a little bit more, _he thought, and he injected as much unfamiliar venom into his voice as he could. "If she's not strong enough to push past this, she's not _worthy _to be a Konoha kunoichi."

If Kiyame's left jab hadn't lost a little of its speed and power due to the deep cut across her bicep, the punch probably would have driven his nose back into his brain.

As it was, he managed to dodge just enough that her knuckles grazed his cheekbone instead of splintering his face, and in the next moment he weaved under her right straight and leapt up to the tiled roof behind him. He crouched on the edge of the roof, smirking beneath his mask.

Her eyes blazed with murderous fury, but they were still the dark brown of old leather or polished wood, and her fingernails were still short and smooth, and her teeth were still, if uncomfortably sharp, small enough to pass for normal at a distance.

"It didn't break," he said. "Shall I see you at the Godaime's office tomorrow, kunoichi?"

Kiyame swore, but at her feet, Katsu ran his long red tongue out in a dog's laugh.

Kakashi's smirk melted into a grin.

"I'm glad to hear it," he said at last, when even Kiyame's impressive vocabulary seemed to be wearing thin. "On the other hand, I'm about, oh—" he glanced up at the sun—"about six hours late for a training session with Maito Gai. You're welcome to join us."

"I'll kick your _ass, _Hatake," Kiyame snarled.

And this time, Kakashi really was glad to hear it.

This time, perhaps, he hadn't been too late.

* * *

Author's Notes: Great thanks to all those who've followed me through the long process of writing _Wolf Mask _with their reviews—I treasure each review I receive, and some of them put me in a review-high that lasts for days—and especially to my beta, Phoenix of Eternity, and to link no miko for generously taking a look. I appreciate the suggestions and the encouragement I've received, and I hope you'll follow me as I move on to (hopefully) better things!

_link no miko:_ Your reviews make me bounce. They are adrenaline shot straight to the veins. Therefore I love them, and you, beyond measure. And I tried to answer your question about the tattoos…

_iamzuul:_ :loves on in return: Whoa. Your reviews make me happy for the rest of the week. I think you may be right that Kakashi is a bit off—Kiyame/Hana certainly is—but, well…:sighs: S'the best I can do at this point. And…the romance died. Sorry. But not really!

_PinkyMcCoversong:_ thanks for the praise and sorry for the confusion! Kakashi does live at a boarding house; apartment probably wasn't the best choice of words there. 'Room' would have been better, or 'lodgings', but that sounds like something out of O. Henry…

_sna:_ I'm so glad you enjoyed it, since I admire your writing so much. And yes, the scene at the memorial is one of my favorites too. I need to write Rin now…

_Charisse:_ :huggles: Thanks for reading! You're right about the cliché (dang it) and I'm glad you liked the rest of it. Miss you…and will do so even more this fall, when you're not there for our marathons!

_The Gandhara:_ Two words: Thanks much! I'm trying to specialize in fleshing out minor characters, and I'm glad to know I'm doing it well.

_IPonly:_ I chose not to change Kiyame's name because in my mind she is already quite different from Hana; I suppose you could call her an original character with a canon background. Also, this means that I can write about Hana without feeling the need to make her compatible with Kiyame, and that I can be rather more hopeful about her and her dogs' (plural) future careers!


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